Self-Defense Won't Fix the College Sexual Assault Epidemic

Nia Sanchez's winning pageant answer has stirred up controversy.

By
Anna Breslaw

Jun 09, 2014

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During the question-and-answer portion of the Miss USA pageant, 24-year-old Miss Nevada Nia Sanchez, who took home the crown, said she believed some colleges might sweep campus rape under the rug to prevent bad press. Sanchez, a fourth degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, added, "more awareness [of the issue] is very important so that women can learn to protect themselves … You need to be confident and be able to defend yourself. That's something we need to start to implement for a lot of women."

Sanchez had the challenge of condensing a lot of loaded sexual politics and back and forth into one concise sound bite — something most of us would struggle with. And while her answer was admirable and showed she took sexual violence on campus seriously, the remark rubbed some people the wrong way, and they took to Twitter to say they thought Sanchez's answer was kind of reductive. Right-wing blogs immediately took these responses to Sanchez's answer and ran with them, with classy headlines such as "Feminists Spew Scorn at Miss USA Pageant Winner Over Her Stance on Self-Defense for Women."

For instance, Elisa Benson, the community manager here at Cosmopolitan.com, tweeted:

I get that the college sexual assault problem can't be solved in 30 secs but still icky to pretend like self defense is the answer. #MissUSA

The tweet was snatched up and taken out of context by a snide conservative blogger: "Got that? Self defense is icky." (And a number of other right-wing outlets that included her tweet among the "crazy feminists'" responses made it a point to mention Elisa works at Cosmo, as if that undermines her intelligence or somehow revokes her right to have an opinion — but hey, it is a women's magazine, and we all know what high regard conservative bloggers have for women.)

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No, what's 'icky' is to pretend self defense is not the answer. There are ways to avoid being a victim, self defense is one @elisabenson.

Self defense isn't icky, and anyone with a fifth-grade reading comprehension level can understand that's not what Elisa was saying. What is icky is the idea that we'd pour the entirety of our time, energy, and federal funding into training every 18-year-old girl in America to be jacked, gun-toting Lara Crofts rather than, oh, I don't know, teaching boys not to rape or shaming college administrators for not taking sexual assault allegations seriously.

Self-defense is a fantastic thing for every woman (or man) to have under their belt — in fact, experts say would-be attackers are often deterred by the confident manner in which women educated in self-defense carry themselves — but this limited view of campus sexual assault prevention perpetuates dangerous myths about sexual assault and shames victims for not adequately "preparing" to defend themselves against rape. It's the same mentality as blaming sexual assault victims for wearing provocative clothing and therefore "brought it upon themselves," rather than blaming their attackers for the actual assault. And even if a woman is physically able to defend herself against an attack, that doesn't mean the administration will acknowledge the attack and give the attacker a punishment fitting the crime. In fact, some colleges are notorious for doing just the opposite. So why do we have to choose between teaching women self-defense and teaching men what consent means? Can't we do both?

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This isn't about yelling at Nia Sanchez — she meant well, and pageant contestants are trained to bring every answer back to their platform. Now that she's earned the title, maybe she'll make one of her causes a slightly more nuanced version of sexual assault prevention. Sanchez is just the catalyst for the larger problem: the denial of rape culture and the idea that pressure should be on women to "not let it happen" rather than rapists for making it happen.